So, Yeah. I Ride.
I started riding because of a girl.
The Schwinn
My high school sweetheart had two brothers who rode, and they took me in. After I spent an entire summer landscaping to buy my first real bike, a 1987 Schwinn in Winter Mint, they gave me my first kit. That bike was beautiful. I loved it more than anything I had ever owned.
I rode from Nappanee to Plymouth almost every day the weather allowed. Thirty miles each way, to see her. On weekends the brothers would pick me up and we'd drive to parts of Indiana that had actual hills. I got strong. I got fast. When I was 17, they snuck me into the Little 500 in Bloomington as part of their team.
California
I moved to California with the bike and a head full of mountains. Indiana had hills. California was supposed to have mountains. I was going to climb things that mattered.
Instead I landed in Long Beach. Miles and miles of flat city in every direction, more concrete than I had ever seen in my life, and a sky that apparently never learned how to rain. It was surreal. Beautiful in its own way, but surreal.
Three weeks after I arrived, the bike was stolen.
I was devastated. And without the bike, without the hills, without anyone to ride with, I just never replaced it.
The China Bike
Years passed. I married another girl, had kids, and one day looked in the mirror and realized I was fat and out of shape. Mostly because I was fat and out of shape. So I bought what I now call The China Bike. It was awful. Heavy, big tires, coasted like a brick. But it got me stronger. I followed it with a used Cannondale crit frame and started back in earnest.
I worked up to 20-30 miles a day on the Cannondale. I finished my first metric century. Then my first imperial. I upgraded to a Cannondale cyclocross bike, then eventually the carbon fiber Trek Domane.
COVID
Then I got COVID.
At first I thought it was just a bad day. There is a hill out near Middlebury, Indiana, a proper steep climb for that part of the world. I had ridden it so many times I was closing in on the KOM in my age group on Strava. The first time I rode it after COVID I barely made it to the top. I had to stop when I got there just to catch my breath.
I told myself it was a bad day.
Then it kept happening. The rides got shorter. The 26 miles after work became impossible. The 64 miles on the weekend became a memory. I kept fighting it, kept showing up, kept clipping in, until one fall I brought the bike inside, put it on the trainer, and that was that.
It has been there ever since.
The Road Back
I'm 57. I've decided that's long enough.
The journey back starts now.
Read The Whole Story
The Road Back, Day One.
I haven’t ridden yet. But I went down to the basement today and looked at the bike. That counts for something. It’s a Trek Domane SL, Ultegra components, which I upgraded to from 105 and still wish I hadn’t. There…
The Schwinn
I saved all summer for it. I was 16, landscaping in the Indiana heat, and every dollar went toward one thing: a 1987 Schwinn in Winter Mint. When I finally brought it home I stood in the driveway and just…
The China Bike
There is a certain kind of decision that makes complete sense in the moment and reveals itself as deeply misguided almost immediately. Buying the China Bike was that kind of decision. It was 2012 or so. I had been married…
The Cannondale Crit Frame
I found it on eBay. A used Cannondale crit frame, red, 105 components. The seller was in Atlanta. We went back and forth on the details the way you do with a stranger on the internet who has something you…
The Cyclocross Bike
The Pumpkinvine Trail was expanding. For those who don’t know it, and I’ll write a proper love letter to the Pumpkinvine another time because it deserves one, it’s a rails-to-trails project that follows an old train route from Goshen to…
The Domane, and What COVID Took
I sold the cyclocross bike to a kid going to Phoenix and went back to riding the crit frame. It’s a fun bike, quick, responsive, the kind of bike that reminds you why you started racing in the first place.…
Paris-Nice and the Itch
I used to watch every mile. Paris-Nice, the Hell of the North, Flanders and The Grand Tours. I subscribed to NBCSN specifically for it and I would sit there for hours. Every breakaway. Every descent. Every moment where everything could…